The last member of the apocalyptic cult behind the worst act of terrorism on Japanese soil has been arrested in Tokyo, 17 years after he allegedly helped other fanatics mount a deadly gas attack on the capital's subway system.

Japanese media reports said police were holding Katsuya Takahashi, who allegedly drove five members of Aum Supreme Truth to the locations from which they launched their co-ordinated attack in March 1995.

Using umbrellas with sharpened tips, they punctured bags filled with liquid sarin and sent the gas coursing through carriages packed with commuters. Thirteen people died and thousands were injured in the attack.

Kyodo said the detained man was apprehended in Tokyo's Ota ward and admitted to investigators that he was Takahashi.

His capture came a few days after police arrested another Aum fugitive, Naoko Kikuchi, who allegedly helped mix the nerve agent. Kikuchi had found regular work and lived with Takahashi for 10 years during her time on the run. She insists she didn't know what she was producing.

Police stepped up their pursuit of Takahashi, 54, after he was filmed by security cameras withdrawing more than 2m yen (£20,000) from a bank in Kawasaki, a town south of Tokyo where he is thought to have lived for more than a decade.

Takahashi went into hiding again after learning of Kikuchi's arrest on 3 June; when police raided his room at a dormitory in Kawasaki last week he had packed a few belongings and fled.

Police sources described Takahashi, whose last job was with a construction firm in Kawasaki, as an avid reader with a short temper and a clear gift for evasion.

During the decade he lived with Kikuchi – pretending to be a married couple called Shinya and Chizuko Sakurai – he decided they should take advantage of the anonymity offered by big cities, save prodigiously and avoid using planes and bullet trains.

He was often seen at a restaurant near his dormitory, where he typically drank just one drink with three skewers of grilled chicken, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun.

By the time the couple separated in 2006, Takahashi is thought to have amassed well over 10m yen, including cash Aum had given him to help him escape.

Kikuchi later had a relationship with Hiroto Takahashi (not related to Katsuya Takahashi), with whom she lived for six years until her arrest in Sagamihara, a town 20 miles south-west of Tokyo.

As police closed in on Katsuya Takahashi, about 5,000 police officers were sent on to the streets with leaflets bearing an up-to-date image of a middle-aged man bearing only a passing resemblance to the younger man with thick eyebrows whose face had stared out of thousands of wanted posters for the previous 17 years.

Takahashi's arrest will close a significant chapter in the Aum saga but it will be some time before Japan fully recovers from the national trauma created by the gas attacks.

The group once had 10,000 members in Japan and 30,000 in Russia. Now, with membership in the hundreds, the cult has renamed itself Aleph and renounced the teachings of Asahara. But it remains under close police surveillance.